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Virtual Worlds , Fiction, and Reality Virtual worlDs, Fiction, anD reality mundos virtuales, fiCCión y realidad ILkkA mAuNu NIINILuOTO University of Helsinki, Finland. [email protected] RECIbIDO EL 13 DE juLIO DE 2011 y APRObADO EL 30 DE AGOSTO DE 2011 resumen abstract Mi objetivo en este artículo es plantear My aim in this paper is to raise and discuss y discutir algunas de las preguntas some philosophical questions about Virtual filosóficas sobre la Realidad Virtual (RV). Reality (VR). The most fundamental El problema fundamental se refiere a problem concerns the ontological nature of la naturaleza ontológica de la realidad VR: is it real or fictional? Is VR comparable virtual: ¿es real o ficticia? ¿La RV es to illusions, hallucinations, dreams, comparable a ilusiones, alucinaciones, or worlds of fiction? Are traditional sueños, o mundos de ficción? ¿Son todas philosophical categories at all sufficient to las categorías filosóficas tradicionales give us understanding of the phenomenon suficientes para darnos la comprensión of VR? In approaching these questions, I del fenómeno de la RV? Para abordar shall employ possible world semantics estas cuestiones, emplearé como mis and logical theories of perception and herramientas filosóficas la semántica de imagination as my philosophical tools. My mundos posibles y las teorías lógicas main conclusion is that VR is comparable de la percepción y la imaginación. Mi to a 3-D picture which can be seen from conclusión principal es que la RV es the inside. comparable a una imagen en 3-D que puede ser vista desde el interior. palabras claVe Key worDs Ficción, alucinación, imaginación, Fiction, hallucination, imagination, percepción, realidad, realidad virtual. perception, reality, Virtual Reality. * This article is a revised version of originally appeared in IO Internet Magazine, vol. 3: Virtual Environments, ed. by Pauline von Bonsdorff, summer 2006. Discusiones Filosóficas. Año 12 Nº 19, julio – diciembre, 2011. pp. 13 - 28 Ilkka Maunu Niiniluoto What is Virtual Reality? In his book Virtual realism (1998), Michael Heim states that virtual reality is a “technology” or “an emerge field of applied science” (4). This is, indeed, one way of looking at VR: computer programs, data gloves and helmets are used to produce artificial sensory inputs; these inputs resemble the participant’s normal interface with the physical environment and thus he feels himself immersed in a new “reality”. Hence, VR is a method of constructing and designing new kinds of artefacts. As a technological activity, VR can be assessed by various criteria which include economy, efficiency, aesthetics, ergonomics, ecology, ethics, and social effects (see Niiniluoto 1997). For example, from the aesthetic viewpoint VR is a new form of media art: by using methods of interactive design it helps to produce works and experiences with interesting aesthetic qualities. From the ergonomic perspective, intense occupation with extraordinary sensory stimulations may lead to a state of nausea where images of virtual worlds and the actual world are confused; this is called the Alternate World Syndrome (AWS) and Alternate World Disorder (AWD) by Heim (1998). In Virtual Reality (1991), Howard Rheingold points out that VR can be employed for the purposes of entertainment, but it may also function as a way of escape and addiction. These ethical and social concerns are also discussed by Heim who suggests that “virtual realism” could mediate between “naive realists” (who blame computers for all social evils) and “network idealists” (who promote all new forms of computerized technology). Instead of aesthetics, ergonomics, and ethics, my main philosophical concern in this paper is ontological. Since Jaron Lanier coined the term “virtual reality” in 1986 and William Gibson spoke of “cyberspace” in his novel Neuromancer in 1984, this new field has been characterized in the United States and Japan by such terms as “virtual environment”, “synthetic environment”, “virtual worlds”, “tele-presence”, and “tele- existence”. Notions like “reality”, “world”, “environment”, “space”, “presence”, and “existence” are ontological categories in the sense that they refer to the most general structures of what is real or exists. On the other hand, they are here qualified by phrases like “virtual” and “tele” which imply some kind of deviation or distance from reality. 14 Discusiones Filosóficas. Año 12 Nº 19, julio – diciembre, 2011. pp. 13 - 28 VIRTuAL wORLDS, fICTION, AND REALITy Today there is a tendency of calling “virtual” almost anything connected with computers: a “virtual library” allows multimedia works to be read in the Web, and a “virtual university” offers courses in Internet in an electronic form. The original Latin term virtus meant human powers and potentiality, and later it referred to human “virtues”. The Concise Oxford dictionary defines “virtual” as “that is such for practical purposes though not in name or according to strict definition”, and Heim defines it as “not actually, but as if” (op. cit. 220). In this as-if sense, terms like “virtual velocity” are comparable to expressions like “semiofficial”, “pseudoscience”, and “artificial leg” which imply that something is only half, falsely, seemingly, non-naturally, or non-genuinely so-and-so. In the same way as we may ask whether artificial intelligence merely pretends or “really” is intelligence (cf. the distinction between weak and strong AI in Searle, 1984), we may raise the question whether virtual reality is “really” real or not. Even though Heim warns that VR is “not synonymous with illusion or mirage or hallucination”, and “not a state of consciousness or a simulated drug trip” (4), the idea of “as-if reality” clearly has a connection to the old philosophical distinction between appearance and reality. Therefore, our analysis of the ontological status of VR has to proceed by comparing it to some important types of phenomena discussed in traditional epistemology. Reality vs. Fiction According to Karl Popper’s (1979) useful classification the domain of reality can be divided into three parts. World 1 consists of physical objects and processes, World 2 contain mental states and events within a human mind and World 3 include human-made artefacts and socially produced institutions. Thus stones, atoms, and fields of force belong to World 1; beliefs, wishes, feelings and emotions belong to World 2; works of art, scientific theories, propositions and other meanings of linguistic expressions, natural numbers and social institutions belong to World 3. In the traditional terminology, the popperian three-fold ontology corresponds to the division between nature, consciousness, and culture & society. Physical entities exist in space and time, and they are in causal interaction with each other. Physicalists take these features to be the general criteria of reality or actual existence (see Devitt 1991). Therefore, they either 15 Ilkka Maunu Niiniluoto eliminate World 2 entities or reduce them to physical states of human brains or bodies. Similarly, most physicalists are nominalists who either reject all World 3 entities as philosophically illegitimate abstractions or attempt to reduce them via subjective World 2 entities to World 1. Conversely, the subjective idealists (e.g., solipsists and phenomenalists) suggest that the whole of reality should be reduced to World 2, while the objective idealists take as the primary reality some abstract entities like Plato’s forms or Hegel’s objective spirit. In contemporary philosophy, idealism has gained some support in new linguistic and social forms: the social constructivists claim the world is a “social construction” arising from human practices and discourses. In my view, the most plausible interpretation of Popper’s ontology is emergent materialism which differs both from physicalism and idealism (see Niiniluoto 1999a-2006). Worlds 2 and 3 have historically developed from the primary World 1 through biological and cultural evolution, and their existence continues to be dependent on the support provided by the material reality. However, as emergent levels of reality, Worlds 2 and 3 have gained a relative independence from World 1: they are able to be in a complex mutual interaction with World 1, and they have their own characteristic features and lawlike regularities that cannot be derived from true theories about the physical world. Emergent materialism accepts ontological realism in two different senses. In the first place, against nominalists, it admits the reality of some abstract entities (like concepts, propositions, numbers, symphonies) which are different from their physical documentations (like written and uttered words and sentences) and mental representations (like ideas and thoughts). However, against platonist versions of realism, such World 3 entities are regarded as human-made social constructions. Secondly, a realist may accept that human beings can causally interact with physical nature, and that World 1 can be structured or “carved up” in different ways by means of various conceptual frameworks; in this sense one may speak about “worldmaking” with Nelson Goodman (1978). Still, unlike Goodman and the recent versions of social constructivism, the realist asserts that World 1 exists independently of human minds, languages, and societies. Charles Peirce defined “the real” as “that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be” (5.311 5.405). This definition allows for the existence of real possibilities: for example, 16 Discusiones Filosóficas. Año
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